Out of Africa around 80,000 years ago, the Homo Sapient continued its nomadic way of life until around 10,000 BC. During the Paleolithic period (Old Stone Age–before 10,000 BC), they lived in small groups (20-30 individuals, incapable of sustaining larger group due to limited food supply), and were constantly on the move to feed themselves. They survived on hunting animals and eating wild vegetation and would stay in one place, as long as they could forage food from that area.
The end of the Pleistocene Epoch about 11,700 years ago (9,700 BC) marked the last ice age, and as the glacial retreats, the world slowly changed from a cold and dry to a warm and wet climate. The new climate turned the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia (the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in modern-day Iraq, bounded on the west by the Mediterranean Sea and on the east by the Persian Gulf), and other great river plains incredibly rich in plant and animal life. With the abundance of food supply, the nomadic man started settling in one place (sedentary lives), but they still were hunter-gatherers, collecting wild wheat, barley, and hunting animals.
However, at around 9,000 BC, partway through the glacial retreat, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere suddenly (within decades) plunged to near-glacial conditions (the Younger Dryas period), limiting the food supply in the Fertile Crescent. People living in settlements had to return to nomadic hunting and gathering or find a new way to survive. Many returned to the mobile way of life, but some stayed in their settlements. The settlers begin planting seeds and harvesting the plants. The Younger Dryas is often linked to the Neolithic Revolution, the adoption of agriculture, as a new way of livelihood. Most anthropologists and other academics believe that there were several independent inventions of agriculture around the globe, which all occurred approximately at the same time. But the Fertile Crescent was a particularly significant area, it is often called the cradle of civilization. With the origin of agriculture, and its spread, our ancestors truly started sedentary life, fulfilling the first definitional condition of ‘Civilization’ -living in permanent settlements.
External Links:
0 Comments